A warm extension of gratitude and welcome to those of you who have decided to follow this blog in the last few days, and as always, deep appreciation for everyone else's continued readership. For whatever it's worth, my readers keep me writing, and writing keeps me sane.
Thanksgiving was modest this year...has been for a few years now with the aunts gone. Recently, the last of my grandmother's generation passed on, leaving my mother's generation to take the reigns and responsibilities of preserving the traditions carried forth from those warm holiday gatherings in Everett.
The best thing about tradition, though, is that nothing is set in stone. From this year forth, my generation gets to contribute, both to new traditions for my mother, and for my daughter. As Olivia approaches the years where she begins to develop clear cut social boundaries and beliefs, I want tradition to offer stability, and I won't settle for anything less. If I want things to happen, I need to make them happen.
Yesterday I posted my phone number on my Facebook page for anyone who might have been struggling with the urge to use or drink to contact me. Thanksgiving can be tough. Any day can be tough for an alcoholic, but the triple crown--Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years--has a tendency to send many newly sober alcoholics into hysterics.
A number of people liked the post, prompting me to strike up a conversation with one of them. When I did, I caught myself offering this person the mechanics of a craving.
Isolation is the single most precious advantage that the disease of alcoholism weilds over the alcoholic. When a craving hits me, I hyperfocus on every drop of alcohol in the room until everything, and everyone else, disappears from my consciousness. My disease sweeps me from wherever the hell I am to an island in my head, where it challenges me to a duel I can't turn down.
Since I cannot fight a disease that centers in the brain, single-handed combat is stressful, exhausting, and ultimately futile.
The only way to beat it is to turn the craving on it's head by offering assistance to those in need. In reaching out to another alcoholic to make sire they had all their supports in place for one of the most difficult days of the year, I was able to get off my island, and make it through the holiday sober.
And because I got through the holiday sober, I had the chance to reconnect with my daughter. We had listened to music in her room and when I went to leave she told me not to. I stayed, perhaps not knowing why, she snuggled up to me, and for the first time since she was a child, Olivia fell asleep in my arms. I listened to her breathing become softer, more rythmic, and slipped away into my room, content that I had resumed the place in my daughter's life where I needed to be.
This is what remember about sobriety...love and trust.
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